vaneramos | Music recovery

Music was always a big part of my life, but grief and depression changed that relationship. Starting in about 1998, I could hardly bear to listen to music when I was home alone. Around the same time the Yamaha ghetto blaster I had used as a stereo since first year university (and hooked up to my disk server) stopped working. My collection of more than 200 Classical CDs and a somewhat smaller popular collection fell into disuse.

As I recovered from depression, music slowly seeped back into my life, but without a stereo system I've relied exclusively on my computer for listening in the apartment. The old Presario was barely equipped to handle it, and would frequently crash under the influence of audio software or online radio. My listening has been largely restricted to the car.

That's rapidly changing, with iTunes on my new computer. During the past week I've hounded out some favourite remembered tracks. These mostly come from 1983 when I was in first year university (before my religious conversion), and the late 90s after I came out and started clubbing. I spent this afternoon loading a big portion of my popular CDs onto my hard drive. Now there are 338 tracks in "My Top Rated" list, and I'm having great fun shuffling and listening to the eclectic music of my life, mixed.

Here's what I've been listening to this afternoon: